This Monday morning, the 5,135 reverse osmosis membranes have already been transferred to the Díaz Rijo Desalination Plant, which will allow increasing the production flow of drinking water in Lanzarote and La Graciosa between 10 and 15%, which means between 8,000 and 12,000 cubic meters more per day.
“We are employing all efforts and putting the necessary resources to change the dynamics of shortages and water cuts that Lanzarote and La Graciosa have suffered in recent years”, according to the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort.
The delivery of the membranes to the Water Consortium has complied with the deadlines established in the contract with the awarded company, the UTE Canaragua-Elmasa. The desalination material is high technology, from the LG company, and has made the trip to Lanzarote from Korea, where they were manufactured.
“I want to congratulate the entire technical team of the Cabildo and the Consortium for having carried out this operation in record time. In March we tendered the contract, it was awarded in June, we signed it the following month and today we already have this high-tech and efficient material available to the desalination plants of Díaz Rijo and Janubio, which will bear fruit in the coming months, after completing the installation process, allowing the renewal of 90 percent of the current membranes”, according to the Minister of Water of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Domingo Cejas.
The specifications of the contract, with an amount of 2 million euros, coming from a subsidy from the Government of the Canary Islands for the declaration of water emergency, established the acquisition of a minimum of 3,200 membranes and a delivery time of the material no more than 5 months. The awarded UTE offered 5,135 membranes, with the same budget, and reduced the delivery time of the membranes from 5 months to 76 days.
Desalination plant for irrigation and new frame for Lanzarote III
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote has highlighted that “the water emergency is serving us as a roadmap and as a financing tool for the investments we have planned to increase production, reduce losses and also support the needs of the primary sector”.
In this sense, at the end of July the new portable desalination plant also arrived in Lanzarote, which will increase the production of irrigation water by 2,500 cubic meters per day and which has been designed by the Technological Institute of the Canary Islands /ITC) with criteria of efficiency and sustainability.
On the other hand, “through the Lanzarote Water Consortium we will put out to tender in the coming days a new production frame of 10,000 cubic meters for the Lanzarote III plant, through another subsidy of 5 million euros from the Government of the Canary Islands, which will improve the water supply to the homes of Lanzarote and La Graciosa”, adds Councilor Domingo Cejas.
The Insular Water Council of Lanzarote, in which all political, social, business and primary sector entities are represented, initially declared the water emergency in November 2024. A measure that was definitively approved on January 14, after the period of allegations, and that came into force after its publication in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands (BOC) in the month of February, and that contemplates measures for the increase of production, the reduction of losses in the distribution networks and the transversal measures of water economy and of wide impact.